Mr. Speaker, I rise a second time to say how much I appreciated the speech of the member who just spoke. I think he put the question well and his selection of literary quotes was relevant.
There is a French novelist-I am not sure of his name-who wrote a book entitled Les animaux dénaturés , a story about a crossbreeding between monkeys and man that turned out badly.
The member mentioned a number of practices that are objectionable, and I agree with him. He also mentioned all the possibilities that science has to offer to cure a number of illnesses. I agree with him on the fact that in maybe 50 years from now, considering what is happening now in the field of genetics research, something around two thirds of what will have been done will be for the best and the other third will have been made illegal, if the laws of ethics and, more simply, of humanity, remain the same.
There is a French scientist who, at some point, ended genetic research performed on animals because the same procedure could have been applied to man. He thought that, considering the present state of science, ethics and even religion, this research had to be stopped.
But research must go on. However, such things as paying donors, sex selection, artificial uteruses, cloning, choosing the sex-as we all know, in some cultures, it is far better to be a man than a woman-those techniques could create a situation where there will be more men than women. This is the cultural issue, but there is also a moral and even a religious issue.
I ask my colleague why the government did not include these measures, which it often describes as horrifying and terrifying, in the Criminal Code. I think Canadians would have readily understood that some of these procedures are in fact in the criminal realm.
What about cloning. If I remember well, that means you create two genetically identical human beings. These are not twins, they are clones, just like computers.
I think that would be criminal. Why did the government not seize the opportunity to ban these procedures and include them in the Criminal Code? Then, Canadians would have understood that it is a crime to do such things, that those procedures are criminal activities. Now it seems we equate something forbidden by the Criminal Code with something immoral. We all know that very often there is a difference between the two. Some activities might be very immoral but acceptable according to the Criminal Code.
Why were those procedures the previous member called horrible and reprehensible, and for good reason, not incorporated in the Criminal Code?